Of the other men before the mast in the Alert, I know nothing of
peculiar interest. When visiting, with a party of ladies and
gentlemen, one of our largest line-of-battle ships, we were escorted
about the decks by a midshipman, who was explaining various matters
on board, when one of the party came to me and told me that there
was an old sailor there with a whistle round his neck, who looked at
me and said of the officer, ``he can't show him anything aboard a
ship.'' I found him out, and, looking into his sunburnt face, covered
with hair, and his little eyes drawn up into the smallest passages
for light,-- like a man who had peered into hundreds of
northeasters,-- there was old ``Sails'' of the Alert, clothed in all
the honors of boatswain's-mate. We stood aside, out of the cun of the
officers, and had a good talk over old times. I remember the contempt
with which he turned on his heel to conceal his face, when the
midshipman (who was a grown youth) could not tell the ladies the
length of a fathom, and said it depended on circumstances.
Notwithstanding his advice and consolation to ``Chips,'' in the
steerage of the Alert, and his story of his runaway wife and the
flag-bottomed chairs (ante, p.
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